Age Gap11 min read
My Neighbor, My Professor — and the Night the Past Came Back
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“Excuse me—” I stood up before I knew what I was doing.
“Emily in the last row in the pink dress, any questions?” Professor Cameron Larson looked down at me like the rest of the room was a stage and we were in the middle of a play.
I sat back down so fast I nearly knocked my notebook off my lap. I mouthed two words and shut my mouth.
After class our dorm room smelled like cheap instant noodles and sunlight through gauze curtains. Frankie—my roommate and best troublemaker—draped herself across my bed.
“When are you moving back home?” she whined.
“This semester’s almost over. I’m going home to study,” I said, stuffing a few shirts into my suitcase.
“Good. I’ll miss you. Who are you going to stalk now? The handsome professor?” Frankie waggled her eyebrows.
“He’s a professor,” I protested, hearing my voice wobble. He had been handsome in that quiet, tall way—187 centimeters and built like someone who grew up on soccer fields. There was something else, too, a face I thought I should remember.
That afternoon I almost missed my ride. I stood on the curb waiting for a car when a white SUV stopped.
“Need help?” the driver’s voice was low, familiar. I looked up and froze.
“Oh—no, it’s fine. I already called a car,” I said.
“Okay. Be safe.” He smiled and drove away. I watched his taillights until they vanished.
At home my mother, Jaya Doyle, fussed like always. “You’re back already? Don’t let your studies slide.”
“She’s coming to visit,” Mom said, as if an army had enlisted. “Heidi and her son are back from abroad. Heidi used to live next door when you were little.”
Heidi Yamaguchi and her son? I tried to lock the memory into place—an older boy who used to carry me on his back, who once helped me sleep when fever stole my breath away. I couldn’t place his face.
When I opened the front door, the living room looked different. There he was—Cameron—sitting on our couch exactly like the man in the lecture hall, only closer.
“Hey, Emily,” he said softly.
“Aunt Heidi? Cameron?” My voice came out small and thin.
“Hi, warm warm,” Aunt Heidi cheered. “You’ve grown up.”
When they left, the living room hummed with the aftertaste of strangers. Cameron lingered while we ate. He watched me with a private little smile that made heat climb up my neck.
“You don’t have to call me professor here,” he told me. “Call me Cameron.”
“Okay,” I said. The word itself felt dangerous and somehow right.
The next morning I woke to a knock. Cameron stood in the hall in a white T-shirt, hair messy. “Sorry to bother you,” he said. “Do you need help carrying stuff?”
We worked together all morning, dragging boxes and clearing space. At one point he handed me a broom.
“Sit on the couch and rest,” he said. “This is heavy work.”
“No, I can help,” I protested. He smiled and let me sweep.
Later he cooked for me—simple tomato and egg noodles. “I learned to cook in college abroad,” he said, stirring the pot. “It’s a life skill.”
“You can cook by yourself?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes. My parents lived apart from me sometimes. I had to,” he said.
I had the first full conversation with him in years. He was gentler than his lecture voice, and something in him made my chest quiet. I didn’t want to be dramatic, but being near him felt like standing in sunlight.
On our way back to campus that week, a small scrappy cat crawled out from under his car and whimpered. The animal’s fur was matted and it had a cut on its paw.
“Do you have a box?” I asked. “I’ll take it to a vet.”
“I have one,” he said. “But my mom is allergic. Would you mind taking care of it? I don’t want to leave it on the street.”
I hugged the box close and promised I’d look after the kitten. I named him Milk because he’d been carried home in a milk crate. That night I texted Cameron.
Emily: “Milk needs a name. Any ideas?”
Cameron: “Milk sounds right. It fits.”
He offered to let me come by anytime to check on Milk. I couldn’t stop visiting. Milk followed me like a shadow and slept on my pillow.
A week later I saw a familiar face in the lobby—my father, Dawson Carney. He was older, thinner, and smelled like cheap alcohol. My stomach dropped.
“Emily,” he said casually, like we were strangers passing at a market.
I wanted to run, but Cameron stepped in front of me. He put a hand on my shoulder, just enough to shield me. “Sir, you can’t hang around the building.”
Dawson glared. “She’s my daughter.” His mouth was a jagged smile.
“Then go to your daughter and show it,” Cameron said, quiet and sharp.
Cameron called the building security. Dawson was escorted away. I trembled and Cameron held me until my breath slowed.
“Don’t be ashamed,” he said. “You were a child then. That man is not your fault.”
That night I lay awake thinking about memory. I had been ill once as a child—sick enough to forget. My mother said those memories were the kind that fade, like a page washed with too much water. For years I’d just lived. But when Dawson appeared, old shadows crept back.
The next day my friend Frankie dragged me to a blind date. I tagged along for moral support. At the restaurant the other boy’s friend flicked his thumb on my phone screen, adding me without permission. I thought nothing of it at first.
Later the boy texted. Persistent. Creepy. I told him no. Then he grabbed my hand in the corridor and wouldn’t let it go. I yanked away. Cameras clicked. People started to stare.
Cameron moved like lightning. He stepped in, and for the first time someone hit back for me.
“Get off her,” he said, and he punched the boy hard enough to drop him on the floor.
Security dragged the boy away and the school later expelled him. A bitter, lonely feeling eased from my chest like someone had cut a rope. I sent Cameron a message.
Emily: “Did you… do that because of me?”
Cameron: “Because you were in trouble. Call me if you need anything.”
I didn’t know how to weigh the gratitude with curiosity. He was always there—coffee in the morning, a bowl of porridge if I felt sick, an encouraging text when my thesis workload made me dizzy. He taught me to boil eggs without burning them. He laughed when I burned things. He told me that I was not small, I was capable.
“You never told me you liked astronomy,” I said one evening.
“I like many things,” he replied. “But I like watching you look at things.”
He laughed at his own words and blushed. That kind of blush was dangerous; it hooked me.
One night I got bad food poisoning—heavy drinking and a frozen soda—and I collapsed at home. Cameron rushed me to the ER and stayed. He didn’t let me sleep alone. He sat in plastic chairs, rubbing my arm, talking nonsense about constellations like he was naming each one just to keep the room warm.
“You could eat better,” he scolded when we sat up the next morning. “No more cold drinks.”
“Who are you, my mother?” I said between pale smiles.
“Someone who worries about you,” he said, and his hand brushed mine.
We began to live like a small family. Milk sprawled on my lap. My mother had gone away to visit her sister, and Heidi was still living next door. The three of us shared dinners and silly stories. A warm safety wrapped around me. I felt brave.
The intimacy that settled between Cameron and me was a safe, slow burn. We learned small rituals: how I take my coffee, the way I tuck my hair behind my ear when I’m nervous. He called me “baby” in messages that made my face heat. I called him “Cam” when I was bold.
One winter morning I woke to his message: Meet me at the observatory at dawn.
When I arrived, the room smelled like cold metal and coffee. Cameron led me by hand to the telescope.
“Look through,” he said. “I thought you’d like to see Jupiter tonight.”
The sight made me gasp. A thousand miles of black and then a tiny shimmering dot. He watched me—long and steady—like someone marking a map.
“Emily,” he said, voice low. “I’ve liked you for a long time. I couldn’t stop.”
I blinked, surprised. “How long?”
“Since you were small,” he said. “Since you were my neighbor, maybe earlier. I always kept you in the back of my head.”
My throat tightened. He had been at my side for years without me noticing the shape of his feelings. I had liked him too, but I kept it safe, small, as if declaring it might change its color.
“Do you really mean that?” I asked.
“Yes.” He leaned forward. “I want to be with you, Emily. I’ve always wanted—”
I stopped him with my hand and kissed him because the world felt too full to keep words. It was light and full of promise. He returned the kiss with a patient, sure tenderness. My heart hammered as if it had been waiting for this very rhythm.
We were careful after that. I still went to class. He still lectured. Outside eyes started to notice. Rumors, small and cruel, whispered through hallways. I ignored them. When they pestered me, Cameron shut them down with a look that made people uncomfortable.
Trouble came from elsewhere. One afternoon a box arrived at our home, unmarked. Inside were photographs—my mother and a man I hadn’t wanted to remember—smiling in old wedding photos, younger and crueler than memory allowed. My legs gave. Old scenes stitched themselves together: blows, slamming doors, the taste of fear.
I fainted and woke in a hospital bed.
“Emily,” Mom whispered, taking my hand. “He asked me for money.”
“Who?” I croaked.
Dawson. He waited for ransom like vultures wait for wind. He had sent the photos to hurt us.
Cameron’s face folded into stone. “He’s done enough,” he said. “I’ll fix this.”
He found Dawson waiting outside. The man tried to bargain. “Give me money. Five thousand, ten thousand—I want to see my daughter.”
“Take ten; leave the city,” Cameron said coolly.
Dawson followed him to the office building. He saw a chance. He stole money from a safe and ran. Security caught him on camera. He was arrested with stolen cash in his pocket—and, more dangerously, a USB that contained stolen confidential research.
“In addition to theft,” I read later in the police report, “we have evidence of attempted theft of protected research property.”
Dawson was arrested and the scale of his crimes unfolded. Listening to the judge pronounce his sentence—thirty years felt surreal—my insides slid and settled in new places. It was justice. It was a wound healed a little.
A week later campus gossip tried to choke the good air we were breathing. One of my classmates, Kaleigh Solovyov, tried to flirt with Cameron publicly and lost. She had always been brittle, used to getting her way. She tried to corner him at a lecture and he said one line that made her step back: “She’s my girlfriend.”
“It’s okay,” Cameron said to me later. “People say things.”
“He annoyed her,” I said. I didn’t like bullies.
He laughed softly. “You’re my shield-bearer now, haven’t you noticed?”
“It’s easy practice,” I said, but my heart thudded. He had stood between me and my father. He had hit someone for me. He’d done all the dangerous things I’d been too frightened to do as a child.
As the semester eased into the cold month, we grew braver with each other’s presence. We took a trip—to see a bowl of stars above a warm coastal town, to taste the real food I’d only dreamed of. He bought plane tickets at midnight without telling me just because I said I wanted to try a certain local dish.
“We’ll go at dawn,” he said, as if travel were just another experiment to be shared.
On a sand-blown dawn he asked, “Can I kiss you?”
I said, “Yes,” and the sea answered us with a slow hymn.
The trip anchored us. We learned to let laughter soften anger, to let patience steady need.
At home, I baked a cake for the little milestone—one hundred days together. I messed up three times and finally shaped something that tasted like care. Cameron opened the gift I chose for him: a small leather wallet. He said, “I like it.” He kissed me in the kitchen, right there between the sink and the spoons; it tasted like cream and warm hands.
On the day the memory storm returned, I opened a package—Dawson’s last cruelty—and everything came back in a rush: the small boy on my back, a hand that didn’t always hold me gently, a shout like thunder. I passed out, but this time I woke with the truth sewn into me.
That night in the hospital I dreamed differently. I saw a little girl curled like a question; I saw Cameron enter and lift her. I saw him stand up to a man whose hands had been bad. The dream ended with me on a plane watching him go.
When I awoke, Cameron’s face was right there. He looked old with worry. “Don’t be angry,” he said. “I left years ago because I thought that was best. I regret it.”
I gripped his hand. “You left me,” I said, soft and clear. “You left when I needed you.”
“I am sorry,” he said. “I was a coward in ways. But I have never stopped caring for you.”
That afternoon he spoke with a calm I had not seen before. He handled police reports, called lawyers, made security arrangements. He was steady. In court, Dawson’s litany of crimes ended with a count against him, and thirty years was what the law allowed. I watched the man who once felt like a shadow move into a small, tiny prison and vanish like smoke.
“He can’t hurt us again,” Cameron said later, folding my hands into his.
I looked up and laughed—a little wild. “It’s over.”
“It’s over,” he repeated.
College life tried to settle back into ordinary rhythm. Kaleigh tried another small scheme—she waltzed into the observatory area and flashed her father’s contacts on her phone. She flirted and schemed. Cameron’s patience grew thin, and when he told her to stop, she flared and left in a storm of tantrum and pride.
“Why do girls like her always think they get the world?” I said once, and Cameron only squeezed my fingers.
He built a little world for me anyway—coffee on cold mornings, a quiet office for me to study, a telescope to show me the hum of distant suns. He promised he would be there. He made small promises and kept them.
On a clear night, he took me by the hand again and led me to a small field behind Heidi’s house. Lanterns lit an aisle of lavender that billowed like a soft violet sea.
“This used to be a field,” he said. “I planted these for you.”
My breath stopped. “For me?”
“For you,” he said, and his voice was steady as a compass. “I like to make small things that matter.”
I didn’t know how to answer. I kissed him and told him, “I like you, too. I always have.”
He smiled like the kind of man who finally let himself be happy. “Will you be with me?” he asked, the words careful as paper.
“Yes,” I said.
We shared a long, private hour under lavender and lamp-light. It felt like time had folded and given us this warm pocket to live in. Later we walked home hand in hand, our shadows interlaced.
Sometimes I wake in the dark and hear the echo of a loud forest—memories that rise like fog. I hold Cameron’s hand, and the fog fades. Sometimes Milk will jump up and lick my face until the last of the fear slips away. I keep the old photographs in a small box. Now the box lives on the top shelf, far away from my bedside. I opened it once and put the papers back in, not to throw them away, but to remember how far I’d come.
When winter came, Cameron took me to his old observatory. He set a telescope and pointed it at a bright star, one we both watched every night before sleep.
“Look,” he said, “that’s where I hope to take you next—further than the city.”
“What about your work?” I asked.
“My work and you,” he said. “They can live side by side.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Promise me one thing,” I said.
“What?”
“Promise me you’ll make breakfast the stupid way I like it sometimes. Burn the edges just enough so we can laugh.”
He kissed the top of my head. “I promise.”
We kiss, and we live. We study. I finish my thesis. He reads the final draft and says, “You did it.” He slides his arm around my waist, and it feels like home.
Months later, we stand on the roof beside the telescope. The city lights are a scattered galaxy, and the telescope’s lens is a mouth that breathes the same sky we share.
“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you remembered earlier?” I ask.
“Maybe I would have been braver sooner,” he says. “But I would have missed some quiet things—like learning to cook for you badly and then better.”
I laugh. The sound blows out over the rooftop and turns into a small, warm bell.
“Good,” I say. “I’m glad you came back.”
He looks at me like the sky looks at a star and folds his hands around mine. “I never left you again.”
We stand there, two ordinary people in the hum of the night, with Milk softly mewing in the doorway. I lift a small photograph from my pocket—not the old ones that used to hurt me, but one he gave me: a picture of the two of us at the beach, messy with sand and happiness.
I tuck the picture into the frame of the telescope’s cabinet and close the door. The picture will live with the stars now.
“Ready?” he whispers.
“For what?” I ask.
“To see the whole sky with me.”
I grin. “Always.”
We watch the night together, and somewhere the first line of dawn trims the horizon with gold. The world is messy and big, but for the first time in a long time, it feels like my own.
The End
— Thank you for reading —